Nearby Theaters

Not to be confused with an earlier Palace Theatre. This originally opened as the Little Princess Theatre in the 1800’s. It became the Princess Theatre in the 1910’s and around October 1914 it converted to a full time movie theatre. It closed around 1927. It was an ‘upstairs’ theatre and had 800 seats.

According to the official web site of the Palace Theatre, this twin cinema occupies a space that was was once an upstairs theater called the Little Princess. The web site says that the Little Princess opened in the late 1800s, but to me the building looks more like something from the early 20th century. There’s no Victorian style to the facade, though it is possible that it was a Victorian building that was remodeled with a more modern facade in the 1910s.

The Corning Evening Leader carries many ads for a theater called simply the Princess during the late 1910s and mid 1920s. The Princess is mentioned as a theater as late as 1929, but this is in an item about an amateur theatrical performance being held there. The last ad for movies at the Princess Theatre that I’ve found is from 1927.

It’s very likely that the Princess Theatre of the 1920s was in the same building as the modern Palace, as a clothing store at 21 Market Street advertised itself as being next to the Princess Theatre.

Google Maps has no Street View for this location, but they have a decent Bird’s Eye View at Bing Maps. The gabled roof of the upstairs hall the theaters occupy is easily recognizable, especially if you rotate the view to the sides.

I’ve found that the original Palace Theatre was just down the block from this theater, probably at 35 W. Market Street. It advertised in the Evening Leader from as early as 1931 and into the early 1950s.

A 1914 issue of Variety carried a brief announcement that the Princess Theatre in Corning had just opened as a picture house with 800 seats. The manager was Harry P. Kress of Wellsville. I can’t find the date of the publication, but it was probably from around mid-October.

I’ve also found two references in Evening Leader items in 1930 and 1931 to a theater called the Little Palace. This was before the first ads for the Palace Theatre at 35 Market had appeared. I wonder if the name Little Palace has been accidentally mingled with the name Princess, and that’s how the modern Palace’s web site came up with Little Princess as the early name of the theater in their building? It’s even possible that the Princess was the Little Palace for a year or so, and then the name Palace was moved to the other theater down the street.